Delfino slows his breathing down, not daring to touch his wounds yet.  "I'm not quite certain what that was, only that it was like smoke but moved with purpose and form.  It doesn't seem to be affected by the weightlessness of the room, though.  I wonder if my relative proximity to the bottom of the room where it was triggered a reaction?"

"If it's a coherent form, it may just attach to the walls and use that for leverage.  I don't think I have any handy way to try and fight it at the moment."

Attilisk continues to help Delfino toward the "control room" so that the others might be able to help with healing, and perhaps they can strategize about their next step.

After seeing his newfound companions in anguish, Paraton breathes long and hard. They take a cypher from their waistband, a purple shining crystal shard. Paraton starts looking at it, and, in a trance-like state their hands move up, pulling down their mask, just for an instant, and set the crystal on their forehead. And then they scream.

OOC: Paraton rolled 10 using 1d10+2. In 10 days the crystal infection will show visible signs. Or it would, if any part of Paraton's body was actually visible. In 30 days the process will be complete.

Question: Do they get the +1 to armor right now?

Delfino limps, but is able to stumble up the ramp with Attilisk's help.  He hisses in pain, but tries to keep quiet as they enter the ramp.  The spiky ball floating in the outer chamber of the control room continues to pulse and turn, the spikes changing from fine to thick and back again.  Delfino moans as he comes into the room, and Attilisk can see Delfino's wounds visibly throbbing in time to the pulses of the floating, spiky ball.'

--

In the control room, Paraton can feel the crystal begin to crawl over their body, first starting to harden their skin beneath their wrappings in a painful, but strangely perfect and physically cool creeping sensation.

"Do you want to rest back out in the hall?"  His eyes are wide, seeing the tandem throbbing.  The linkages between the two locations and the ... thing that attacked Delfino are deeper and more complex than he would have imagined.

Porgot, hovering over the blue communication sphere, anxious at not receiving a response hears the moan from the room leading to the control room and gasps, "That must be them!" He hustles out to find Attilisk standing over Delfino, asking whether he'd be more comfortable waiting in the hallway. He runs to the pair of them and kneels down next to Delfino.

"I'm so glad that you're ok. Let me see what happened to you." He looks at the wounds and tries to learn what he can about what caused them and how he might be able to help treat them.

Attempt to heal 3 stat points applying 1 level of effort

Might: 12/12 Speed: 10/10 Intellect: 17/19 E2

21:29, Today: Porgot the Adherent rolled 13 using 1d20.  Healing.

As Porgot goes to tend to Delfino's wound, his sense of the magnetic fields of the earth sharpens abruptly.  The spiky metal ball hums as Porgot places his hands over the injury, and suddenly the surface imitates the same injury on its surface.  Porgot feels the fields around the metal moving through him, and realizes he can close the wound on the metal ball... and as he does, the wound on Delfino's leg closes.

Then just as abruptly as it started, it stops, and Porgot feels a wave of exhaustion.

"Hyunnnhhhh." Potgot groans at the energy that tears through him. "Delfino, it binds you!" The final pulse of energy that seals the wound leaves Porgot panting, he looks at the ball.

"Even these materials bend to the law of nature." He says to nobody in particular after recognizing the familiar tang of magnetic metals.

M 11/12 S 10/10 I 17/19

Attilisk looks back and forth between the ball and Delfino's leg.  Eventually he turns to Porgot.  "That's not like any law I ever heard of."

More of a suggestion, I guess, says Paraton while setting up a sleeping mat for Delfino.

"Well, it looks like the good news is that the egg chamber has a solid seal on it, likely enough to hold the beasties.  The bad news is that right now, it is sealed, so there's no way to get them inside it without risking releasing the ... whatever attacked Delfino."

Attilisk sits down and pulls out his sketch pad.  He draws the patterns he's seen on the orb above, and the snarls of damage that were on Delfino's leg.  This calms him and allows him to think.

"Any ideas?  The best I can come up with at the moment is to find or make some path into the egg chamber that is big enough to run through.  Lure the beasties there.  Drop the boundary just as the lure gets to the egg, hope the egg tendrils attack the phasing beasties long enough for the lure to run back out, and then seal it again with all three of them inside."  He sets down the pencil he's writing with and looks up at the others.  "Of course, I'm open to any better ideas, because that one's damn near worthless, but it's the best I've got at the moment."

Porgot looks at Attalisk, "It bends like sweet metal, it follows the law that some metals follow, the law that I can touch with my will by the grace of the Transfigured God." Porgot is staring at the spiking orb as he speaks, "It is blessed, and has blessed us."

"If this is the right plan, the transfigured God will aid it to happen. If we must sequester these phase beasts, it seems as plausible plan as any to contain creatures not subject to walls. My heart is pulled down deep, where the machines sing, but the phase beasts may prove most troublesome there."
This message was last edited by the player at 23:45, Mon 03 Feb 2020.

The older woman had been uncharacteristically quiet, straining with all her focus upon her empathic senses, reaching toward the "shadows".  Reaching...  reaching...

At first, they were sleeping... but she sensed their growing hunger, growing... growing...

And then, a surge of frustration...

But something was wrong.  She felt the waves of pain and distress from her companions, even through her single-minded focus.  She was needed.  She had to return to them.  But her telepathic focus upon the shadows and the intensity of their emotions was difficult to disengage from.  Her empathic senses were throbbing...

:: Sovereign One, aid me now, and enable me to aid these others, I pray... ::

The frustration slowly faded as a more mundane awareness returned.

She blinked, and shook her head, trying to take in the scene before her.

"How much time has passed, and what has happened?  Does anyone need healing?"

Paraton briefly glances at Eleisai, then towards Delfino, then back to Eleisai, and then addresses Attilisk:

It's hard for me to suggest a better plan, having just been catapulted here from my home hours ago. And I hate things that try to harm me and that I cannot even touch. Hate them.  Your suggestion of another path is interesting. Maybe you... we missed something earlier?

Otherwise... I'll be the lure this time.

Attilisk looks around the room and notices the closed door.  He chuckles.  "It's entirely possible we missed something.  Probably many things.  This place is huge."  He stands, repacks his sketch pad, and ambles toward the opposite door.  "Maybe further exploration will reveal a simpler solution.  Or at least a safer one."

Paraton looks at the door, and snorts.

Well, I'll be... Yes, I guess I can virtuously sacrifice later.

They approach the door and listen to it intently, touching its surface with gloved fingers and covered ears.

The door on the far side of the spiky ball room (or perhaps the better description now would be a kind of metallic liquid held in magnetic suspension) is softly rounded with the design of the spherical room, bearing faint inlays in a swirling, helical pattern in strands of three.  The outlines glows very faintly a pale blue.

Attilisk will run his hand gently over the door. "Beautiful..."  He'll continue looking for an opening mechanism as his inspection procedes.

Porgot watches Attilisk touch the shimmering door, and looks carefully to see if it might be made of metal as well.

The door does indeed seem to be metal, and as Attilisk's hands glide over it he sees part of the grooves line up.  As he does that, the metallic ball shifts, lines appearing over its surface as well!

Paraton breathes deeply, and goes back to the controls, where they start fiddling and pressing plates and surfaces in a manner that should help open the locked door.
Try now, Attilisk! they almost shout. I think I got it!

Paraton rolled 14, they are trying to use the machine to open the closed metal door.

Attilisk tries to decipher what Paraton is accomplishing and respond accordingly to open the portal.

Porgot holds his arm out straight, his fingers a claw as he focuses himself and reaches out to funnel the force that moves metal.


Might: 12/12 Speed: 10/10 Intellect: 16/19 E2

Move metal might 8/10


Spend 1 intellect for 10 might pool effort 2 edge 1 force to move metal to push the metal to the rim and open the portal.

23:20, Today: Porgot the Adherent rolled 3 using 1d20.  Might move metal (effort 3 at cost of 2 pool) .

Porgot feels the door, and also the liquid metal ball.  Lines incise along the surface of the ball, mimicking the same lines on the door, and suddenly the door splits at the lines incised on its surface, flowing back into the frame and leaving the doorway clear.

Inside is a short stretch of metallic walkway that abruptly terminates in broken shards, jutting out into an enormous room.  The room is a vast, over a hundred feet high, with the broken walkway protruding within fifteen feet of the ceiling, illuminated with soft blue glowing insects that are floating around the room like stars in the sky.  Angled across the room is a huge lozenge-like structure of smooth blue-black, with a few small vanes at regular intervals along its fatter end (pressed near the top of the room, within ten feet of the walkway), and the end at the bottom of the room more pointed and seemingly having cracked the wall below.  Curiously, there seems to be no corresponding entry where this curious thing could have come from.  The room has one other exit that you can see, a small round hole about five feet above the floor, near the crack where the oblong thing lies.  The hole looks similar to the entrance to the egg room.

There is a smell of ozone in the air, and tiny flickers of blue light play over the surface of the oblong structure with a crackling pop...

Attilisk squats by the end of the hallway and surveys the room, trying to understand the nature of the vast object before (and below) him.  He whistles slowly in appreciation.